
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



ChaiSX Copyright m5^^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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AUG 11 1898 



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PERENNIALS 



SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS 

OF THE 

RT. REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 

ARRANGED FOR EACH DAY OF 
THE YEAR 



" My little tasks — the little tasks even of my little life — 
claim the divinest inspirations which the martyrdoms and 
the crusades of the most splendid souls require." 



NEW YORK 

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street 

1898 



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Copyright, 1898 

BY 

E. P. BUTTON & CO. 



^^0 OF COfij^^ 




TWO COPIES RECEIVF' 



Zhc mnicberbocfser ptcss, new ^ovk 






perennials. 



5anuar^ 3f tt6t 
When a man starts afresh, either 
with the newness of a new year, or 
with the stimulus of altered circum- 
stances, or with the inspiration of a new 
work, what his start ought to do for 
him is to refresh the deepest principles 
by which he lives. In a new beginning 
men ought to feel, and in some way 
more or less clear they do feel, what 
they are and what great powers are at 
work upon them. 

Januari^ Second* 
It is God, and the discovery of Him 
in life, and the certainty that He has 



2 iperennials* 

plans for our lives and is doing some- 
thing with them, that gives us a true, 
deep sense of movement, and lets us 
always feel the power and delight of 
unknown coming things. 

^anuar^ G^bicD^ 
The peace of any man's soul who has 
outgrown mere self-indulgence, can 
only come by going forward — on to 
the deepest principles and final causes 
of things. Put God underneath all 
your life, and your life must rest upon 
the Everlasting Arms. 

5anuar^ Jfourtb* 

God is the only final dream of man. 
Door after door opens; there is no 
final chamber till we come where He 
sits. All that ought to be done in the 
world has a right to know itself as 
finally done for Him. 



January* 3 

January jftttb* 

Coming to love God is like climbing 
a high mountain. It takes you out of 
the low valley of formal life. It sets 
you upon the open summit of spiritual 
sympathy, close to the sun. 

5anuar^ Stjtb* 

A man's place is made ready for him 
in the mind of God; the man's life is 
set here as a positive, clear fact; and 
what comes next ? . . . That life 
must tell. It must go out beyond 
itself. It must have influence. 

5anuati^ Seventh. 

*' A live man " is an American 
eulogy. . , . The '* live man " is 
the man who loves goodness and de- 
sires it for himself and his brethren, 
and lets his love go out into effort 
wherever it gets a chance. 



4 perennials* 

5anuari2 Btgbtb* 

Christianity lives in two great ideas 
— personal perfection and humanity. 
. . . The disciple of Christianity 
finds that he cannot grow perfect 
except by helping his fellow-men, 
and that he cannot effectively help 
his fellow-men except out of the re- 
sources of an ever-growing goodness 
in himself. 

January IFllntb* 

When you come down from the 
summits, you do not come away from 
God. There is no task of life in which 
you do not need Him. The Nation is 
as truly His as the Church. The work- 
bench needs His light as truly as 
the cloister. . . . God hasten the 
day when the world shall freely use 
the divinest powers for its commonest 
tasks ! 



Januar^^ 5 

January XLcntb. 
Do not delay until some need worthy 
of God shall seem to make it possible 
for you to come to Him. A// needs 
need Him, Come with the needs you 
have. . . . Through His supply of 
them He will awaken higher needs; 
and at last, little by little, He will 
fulfil you with Himself. 

January JEleventb^ 
Many men attempt to keep up a 
body of good habits without any spirit- 
ual purpose of goodness to inhabit 
them. It is as anxious and costly and 
hopeless an undertaking as would be 
the attempt to keep in repair a whole 
village of unoccupied houses. 

January tTwelttb* 

Reverence the simple, the prosaic, 
the natural, the real, but demand of 



6 perennials^ 

every common thing of life, whether it 
be your body or your money or your 
daily experience, that it shall bloom 
into fine results in your own soul and 
in your influence on the world. 

5anuar^ C^birteentb* 
Every cross, since Christ the Light 
hung upon His, is a light-giver. O 
sufferer with any nameless agony, re- 
joice if thy cross lightens thy life as 
thy Saviour's did His. If it lets thee 
see the higher end of life — that men 
and women were not born to live 
daintily, . . . but to bring praise 
to God, — if this has been revealed to 
thee by suffering, rejoice and glory in 
thy every pain as Elijah must have glo- 
ried in the fiery horses that bore him up 

to God. 

January 3fourteentb» 

Wherever there is any real, pure joy 
in any smallest pleasure-bearing vein 



of man's existence, there is God. 

. . . He is always uncontent if any 
one of His children, loving any good- 
ness anywhere, does not trace it back 
to Him, and love Him in loving it. 
He sees that none of His children get 
the best good out of any blessing un- 
less they receive Him in it. 

January jfitteentb* 

It is the oneness of the soul's life 
with God's life that at once makes us 
try to be like Him and brings forth our 
unlikeness to Him. It is the source at 
once of aspiration and humility. The 
more aspiration, the more humility. 
January Stjteentb. 

The noisy waves are failures, but the 
great silent tide is a success. The pur- 
pose, the consecration, of the life to 
God and goodness is its tide. The 
special struggles to do good things are 



8 perennials* 

the waves. The deep, persistent, and 
unchanging hate of the peculiar sin, 
which is determined never to be recon- 
ciled to it and to fight against it till it 
dies, — that is the soul's success, which 
does not falter or stop, and which car- 
ries along with it all the partial failures 
of which the life is full. 

3-anuar^ Seventeenth. 

It is the bright, young, free, hopeful 
element that starts up at His coming 
to bid Him welcome. . . . The 
dry man of books, the dusty man of 
business, the old man crusted with the 
dreary years, — they all grow young 
again, the everlastingly young part of 
them asserts itself, when they take 
Christ. 

Januari? Ei^bteentb* 

Holiness does not make men monot- 
onous. The dimmer the light, the 



more things look alike. Increase the 
light and then you see how different 
they are. 

January IRineteentb* 

Merely to see that things are right or 
wrong, and not to feel a pleasure in 
their rightness and a pain in their 
wrongness, does not indicate a finely 
moulded character. 

5anuari5 tTwentfetb^ 

The very reverence with which we 
honor God may make us shut Him out 
from the hard tasks and puzzling ques- 
tions with which we have to do. Many 
who call themselves theists are like the 
savages who, in the desire to honor the 
wonderful sun-dial which had been 
given them, built a roof over it. Break 
down the roof; let God in on your 
life. 



lo perennials* 

January ^vocnt^^Uvet. 

For the world to say, and for us to 
hear, nothing better than *' Enjoy! " 
is to turn the relation between the 
world and man into something hardly 
better than that which exists between 
the corn-field and the crows. 
He who is always hearing and answer- 
ing the call of life to be thoughtful and 
brave and self-sacrificing, he alone can 
safely hear the other cry of life tempt- 
ing him to be happy and enjoy. 

3-anuati2 Zvocnt^^eccon^. 

Let go the fascination of the un- 
healthy and the exceptional ; come to 
the everlasting health, the great natural 
and normal life which lies under the 
fretfulness of living as the great sea 
underlies the fretful waves, — ** Come 
unto Me." 



Januari?* n 

When the world opens to you as a 
plan of God, when all existence is 
vocal with His meanings, when His in- 
tentions thread the universe so that he 
who reads human progress, in its large- 
ness or its littleness, reads God's will, 
— that is *' seeing God/' 

January Q;went^=tourtb^ 

These lives of ours, hurrying on in 
their ambitions, spreading out in their 
loves, — they are capable of being filled 
with God. . . . Without losing 
their eager pursuit of their appointed 
task, without losing their cordial 
reaching after the lives around them, 
they shall be quietly, steadily, nobly 
lifted into something of the peace and 
dignity of the God whom they aspire 
to. 



12 perennials^ 

There is no life so humble that, if it 
be true and genuinely human and obe- 
dient to God, it may not hope to shed 
some of His light. There is no life so 
meagre that the greatest and wisest of 
us can afford to despise it. We cannot 
know at what sudden moment it may 
flash forth with the life of God. 

5anuari2 ^went^s=6tjtb» 

The world takes us as we give our- 
selves to it. If we say to it, ** Make 
us noble,'' it does make us noble. If 
we say to it, ** Make us mean," it does 
make us mean. It is our minister, ful- 
filling our commissions for us upon our 
own souls. 

January XLx^cnt^^scvcntb. 

We all know that the best help that 
has been given to us in life has not 



come from those who gave us money 
or anything which money could repre- 
sent. . . . There are higher things 
to give than money, and any man who 
really wants to give something may 
find something to give, though his 
purse be empty. 

Are hearts never broken by blessings? 
Does the sun, with its still and steady 
mercy, work no chemical changes more 
gracious and more permanent than the 
wild winds accomplish ? . . . I be- 
lieve that much of the best piety of the 
world is ripened not under sorrow, but 
under joy. 

5anuari^ C^went^^nlntb. 

How life lifts itself up with interest 
and dignity when it becomes the cul- 



14 perennials* 

ture of God's redeemed children for 
their Father's house ! 

Januari^ XLhixtictb. 

Men who do their work without en- 
joying it are like men carving statues 
with hatchets. The statue gets carved 
perhaps, and is a monument forever of 
the dogged perseverance of the artist ; 
but there is a perpetual waste of toil, 
and there is no fine result in the end. 

January 1Ibtrt^==fir6t. 

You who are wishing you could do a 
thing you ought to do, and hiding be- 
hind your weakness; you must hear 
God saying, '* Do it! '' and feel the 
necessity of obeying Him, the joy of 
pleasing Him, run through your being 
like the strong blood of a new life; 
then, then only, you are on your feet, 
and the impossible thing is done. 



Irreverence everywhere is blindness 
and not sight. It is the stare which is 
bold because it believes in its heart 
that there is nothing which its insolent 
intelligence may not fathom, and makes 
the world as shallow as it ignorantly 
deems the world to be. 

jfebruar^ SeconD* 

No one is living worthily who is not 
faithful already to the future life which 
he does not yet understand, but which 
he knows must come. . . . Before 
the god has occupied the temple, the 
temple must feel the influence of his 
promised coming, and keep its empty 
courts clean for him. 
15 



i6 perennials* 

jfefcruar^ Zbiv^. 

The days of sickness, days of tempt- 
ation, days of doubt, days of discour- 
agement, days of bereavement, and of 
the aching loneliness which comes when 
the strong voice is silent and the dear 
face is gone, — these are the days when 
Christ sees most clearly the crown of 
our need upon our foreheads, and 
comes to serve us with His love. 

jFebruar^ Jfourtb* 

Any man who is good for anything, 
if he is always thinking about himself 
will come to think himself good for 
nothing very soon. It is only a fop or 
a fool who can bear to look at himself 
all day long without disgust. 

afebruar^ jfiftb* 
Like the disciples pulling calmly on 
and thinking they could cross the lake, 



jfebruarp* 17 

the Christ in their boat lying asleep, is 
the mere dogmatism that rests in its 
own sufficient grasp of the truths of 
our religion. . . . No religious 
calm is safe in which the personal 
Christ sleeps and we think that we can 
do without Him. It is a blessed storm, 
however hard it blows, that makes us 
wake Him. 

afebruar^ Sijtb* 

If you do your work with complete 
faithfulness, . . . you are making 
as genuine a contribution to the sub- 
stance of the universal good as is the 
most brilliant worker whom the world 
contains. You are setting as true a 
fact between the eternities as he. 

jFebruar^ Seventb* 

Greatness, after all, in spite of its 
name, appears to be not so much a 



i8 perennials* 

certain size as a certain quality in 
human lives. It may be present in 
lives whose range is very small. 

Food is not health. The human 
body is built just so as to turn food 
into health and strength. And truth 
is not holiness. The human soul was 
made to turn, by the subtle chemistry 
of its digestive experience, truth into 
goodness. 

jFebruar^ •ffllntb* 
The plant ought to come to flower ; 
but if the plant fails of its flower it is 
still a plant. The duty should open 
into a joy; but it may fail of joy and 
still be a duty. If the joy is not there, 
still hold the duty, and be sure that 
you have the real thing while you hold 
that. 



ifebruari?* 19 

jfebruars XLcntb. 
All our wickednesses, which we call 
little wickednesses at home or in the 
street — they all take their place in, 
they all declare their oneness with, that 
sin which brought Christ to the Cross. 

Jfebruaris Eleventb^ 

The duty of physical health and the 
duty of spiritual purity and loftiness 
are not two duties ; they are two parts 
of one duty. ... Be good that 
you may be well ; be well that you may 
be good. 

ffebruari^ ITwelttb* 
Great men are in the world what the 
most enlightened and exalted experi- 
ences are in the life of any man. They 
are the mountain-tops on which the in- 
fluences which are afterward to fertilize 
our whole humanity have birth. 



20 iperennials* 

jfebruar^ ^blrtecntb^ 

The field stands watching the faith- 
ful man, and when he does another 
faithful thing it praises him with a new 
wheat sheaf or a new olive tree. . . . 
There is something very attractive be- 
cause there is something very true in 
that idea. It makes the earth a unit. 

jfcbruari? jfourteentb^ 
The souls that meet as friends in 
God may well believe that they shall 
hold each other as eternally as He 
holds each and each holds Him. 

jfebruar)? jfitteentb. 

There is not one who does not need 
the strength of God to refuse some 
bread that the devil is holding out to 
him, that in the hunger of his lower 
nature he may feed his soul on some 
eternal word of God. 



jfebruarp. 21 

jfebruare Stjteentb* 
If you must pass through what is 
even a desert to get to fertile, smiling 
lands beyond, still it is not good to 
count even the desert a mere necessary 
evil, to get through and be forgotten 
as soon as possible ; it is good, as you 
plod through the sand, to feed your 
eyes with the vastness and simplicity 
of the world which the monotony of 
sky and sand can most impressively 
display to you. So, if God has ap- 
pointed to any of us times of solitude 
and friendlessness, let us pray that we 
may not pass through them, however 
dreary they may be, without bringing 
from them greater conceptions of Him 
and of our fellow-men and of ourselves. 

jfebruar^ Seventeentb* 

Sin and holiness are not in things, 
but in souls ; and all things are beauti- 



22 iperennfala* 

ful in the time when a soul uses them 
for holy uses with a loving, humble, 
and obedient life. 

jfebruar^ iBigbtccnth. 

It takes only one volcano anywhere 
upon the earth to show that the heart 
of the earth is fire, and that some day 
it may burst through the thickest crust ; 
. . . that is the tragedy of our single 
sins. 

jfebruars fllneteentb. 

Whatever may be the special aspect 
that life presents to us, there is always 
behind it a larger purpose of life of 
which these special aspects are only 
exhibitions. That larger purpose is 
the reception of God by the soul of 
man. 

3febtuari5 ZvocntictD. 

The glory of the star, the glory of 
the sun — we must not lose either in 



jfebruats* 23 

the other. We must not be so full of 
the hope of heaven that we cannot do 
our work on the earth ; we must not 
be so lost in the work of earth that we 
shall not be inspired by the hope of 
heaven. 

You can be idle for God, if so He 
wills, with the same joy with which 
you once labored for Him. The sick- 
bed or the prison is as welcome as the 
harvest-field or the battle-field when 
once your soul has come to value, as 
the end of life, the privilege of seeking 
and of finding Him. 

jfebruars a:went^ssseconD» 
A thousand unrecorded patriots 
helped to make Washington, a thou- 
sand lovers of liberty contributed to 
Lincoln. . . . And any man, who 



24 perennials* 

in his small degree is living like the 
child of God, has a right to all the 
comfort of knowing that God will not 
let his life be lost, but will use it in the 
making of some great child of God. 

He who has lived in the form of an 
experience looks back, while he who 
has entered into the substance of an 
experience looks forward. Live deeply 
and you must live hopefully. 

jFebruar^ ^went^^tourtb. 

Out of the hillside of humiliated 
pride, deep in the darkness of hushed 
despair, in the fretting and dusty at- 
mosphere of little cares, wherever souls 
are being tried and ripened, in what- 
ever commonplace and homely ways, — 
there God is hewing out the pillars of 
His temple. Oh, if the stone can only 



fcbvnavv* 25 

have some vision of the temple of 
which it is to He a part forever, what 
patience must fill it as it feels the blows 
of the hammer and knows that success 
for it is simply to let it be wrought 
into what shape the Master wills. 

Jfebruar^ ^went^:=fittb. 

Realize the power of sinfulness, 
which has in it the cruelty and false- 
ness and impurity of the worst men 
that have lived, that you may realize 
also the power of holiness, which has 
in it the truth and bravery and gentle- 
ness of all the saints. 

ffebruat^ ZvQcnt^=^6i^tb. 

If you really want to help your 
fellow-men, you must not merely have 
in you what would do them good if 
they should take it from you, but you 
must be such a man that they can take 



26 iperenmals* 

it from you. The snow must melt 
upon the mountain and come down in 
a spring torrent, before its richness can 
make the valley rich. 

JFebruar^ ITwent^s^aeventb^ 
All our works, even the greatest, are 
so little in relation to the world's need ! 
All our works, even the least, are so 
great in relation to the doer's faithful- 
ness! 

ffebruari^ ^went^^eigbtb^ 

Even the eternal abiding of the Son 
in the bosom of the Father's affection 
has to feed itself on the Son's doing of 
the commandments of the Father. 
. . . What" are we that we should 
think that in us the fire of love can 
burn without the fuel of duty ? 



/Bbarcb aplrst 

** I never will obey/' men say, as if 

so they asserted the greatness of their 

souls. Is it not true that what they 

really assert is the meagreness of their 

lives ? He who obeys nothing, receives 

nothing. 

/Ilbarcb SeconD. 

It seems to be very certain that the 
world is to grow better and richer in 
the future, however it has been in the 
past, not by the magnificent achieve- 
ments of the highly gifted few, but by 
the patient faithfulness of the one- 
talented many. 

/IBarcb Zbivt>. 

Never be afraid to bring the tran- 
scendent mysteries of our faith — 
27 



38 perennials* 

Christ's life and death and resurrection 
— to the help of the humblest and com- 
monest wants. 

/IRarcb jfouttb^ 

We may strive, by that devotion to 
the spiritual element in national life 
which even pure secularity of public 
methods still leaves possible, to hasten 
the day — which must come if Christ be 
what we know He is — when the idea 
of Jesus will be the shaping and moving 
power of the Christian State. 

/IBarcb Jflttb. 

Thoroughly believe that the Church 
is certainly bound to be spiritual, and 
the State to be magnanimous, and 
Society to be pure, and you are armed 
or inspired against the unspirituality of 
the Church and the sordidness of the 
State and the impurity of social life. 



/IDatcb* 29 

/Ilbarcb Sijtb* 

** Lo, I am with you alway/* We 
are not alone. The work is not ours, 
but His. The strength to do it is not 
to be called up out of the depths of 
ourselves, but taken down from the 
heights of Him. 

/IBarcb Seventb^ 

Any experience of ours, once made 
helpful by the heavenly element, has a 
strange universalness. It can help men 
who are passing through an experience 
totally unlike itself. Souls in full tide 
of joy have subtle gospels for the poor, 
discouraged, broken men who lie beside 
the road through which they pass. 

Aarcb lEigbtb. 

What we get from fellow-men in all 

the close and pressing contacts into 

which life brings us with one another, 

depends not nearly so much upon what 



30 iperennials* 

the men are whom we touch, as upon 

what sort of men we are who touch 

them. 

/Iftarcb mintb. 

As soon as God touches you, you 

shall burn with a light so truly your 

own that you shall reverence your own 

mysterious life, and yet so truly His 

that pride shall be impossible. 

jfflbarcb Zcntb. 
It is not every sorrow that helps the 
sorrowing, not every success inspires 
courage, not every joy makes the joy- 
less lift up their heads, — all these ex- 
periences are of the earth and earthy, 
mere pools of water, until the angel's 
touch falls on them, until the heavenly 
element comes into them. 

/Ilbarcb Eleventb* 
There is an everlasting struggle going 
on against wickedness and wretched- 



ness. . . . How many there afe 
who stand apart and wish it well, but 
never expose themselves for it, nor do 
anything to help it. 

/IBarcb Xiwclttb. 

Men are captivated with the idea of 
self-denial; and then they invent in- 
genious ways to make self-denial com- 
fortable and easy. . . . They build 
steps of straw to climb to heights of 
gold. 

/nbatcb a:blrteentb* 

If joy in work were a mere polish 
and decoration of life, it would be sad 
that man should not have it; but if it 
is the means by which alone the work 
of life may be effectively and nobly 
done, then its loss may be the very 
loss of life itself. 



32 perennials. 

iHbarcb jfourteentb. 

The world claims for you, and your 
own soul claims for you, your best. It 
is an obligation to yourself and an ob- 
ligation to the world. 

flliarcb jfttteentb. 

Ah, the question is not whether that 
is wicked, whether God will punish 
you for doing that. The question is 
whether that thing is keeping other 
and better things away from you. 

^arcb Sljteentb. 

Not in the leaves, but in the root, 
lives the tree's life. Not in the act, 
but in the heart, are the issues of life 
and death ; and failure is never total 
and complete till the heart turns away 
in obstinacy and sets its face towards 
evil. 



/IDarcb* 33 

Aarcb Seventcentb^ 

All the separation from sin, all the 
self-sacrifice by which alone you could 
preserve your own purity and help 
your brethren, has been in you the re- 
newal, the echo, of that terrible giving 
of Himself for truth and man which 
Christ accomplished. 

Aarcb JEightccnth* 

Try to find out if your repentance 
for sin is real — a genuine sorrow for a 
wrong life. If it is — no matter if it 
falls short of the complete contrition 
which you picture to yourself — still 
keep it, hold it fast ; do not let it slip 
away into the placid content which you 
felt before you were penitent at all. 

iflBarcb IRineteentb^ 

You feed on the cornfield and then 
go and build your house, and it is the 

3 



34 iperennfals* 

cornfield in your strong arm that builds 
the house, and piles the stone, and lifts 
the roof into its place. You feed on 
Christ and then go and live your life, 
and it is Christ in you that lives your 
life, that helps the poor, that tells the 
truth, that fights the battle, and that 
wins the crown. 

/llbarcb Zvocntlctb. 

The mystery and awfulness of God is 
a conviction reached through serving 
Him. . . . Would you grow rich 
in reverence ? Go Avork, work, work 
with all your strength ; so let life deepen 
around you and display its greatness. 

/IBarcb a:went^s=fir6t» 

All of us who are thoughtful discover 
very early that happiness or unhappi- 
ness may mean very much or very 
little, that there is a consciousness 



/IDarcb* 35 

underneath sorrow and joy into which 
we must penetrate, in which we must 
live, before we can know our true lives. 

/Bbarcb Zvccnt^^Bccon^. 

Higher than intelligence or knowl- 
edge, as a gift from man to man, is 
moral inspiration. It is good to give 
man a new idea, but surely it is better 
to give him a high motive. The mo- 
tives of the noblest actions are lying 
all about us all the time. 

dlbarcb a:went^:5tbtrD* 

Every day the power that we will 
not use is failing from us. Every day 
the God whose voice speaks through 
all the inevitable necessities of our 
moral life is saying to the men who 
keep their talents wrapped in their 
napkins, '* Take the talent from him.'' 



36 perennials* 

In a true sense everything is a man's 
own which needs that man ; not every- 
thing which he needs, but everything 
which needs him. ... I pity the 
man who does not know the responsi- 
biHty and privilege of that high sort of 
ownership. 

/Bbarcb tlwenti^=fittb^ 

When God speaks to you, you must 
not make beHeve to yourself that it is 
the wind blowing or the torrent falling 
from the hill. You must know that it 
is God. You must gather up the whole 
power of meeting Him. You must be 
thankful that life is great and not little. 
You must listen as if listening were 
your life. And then, and then only, 
can come peace. All other sounds will 
be caught up into the prevailing rich- 



/IDarcb* 37 

ness of that voice of God. Discord 
will cease ; harmony will be complete. 

/Dbarcb Zvccnt^'^eiitb. 

As we hear the sound of His coming 
in all this movement of Christian life 
around us, Who is He that comes ? A 
Wonder-worker to bring us forgiveness? 
A Truth-teacher to open Heaven ? 
Yes; but He is more than that if we 
will let Him be. . . . He comes 
with His eternal heart of pity, which, 
when He gives it to us, becomes our 
new heart of trust. 

^arcb ?rwent^ss0eventb. 

In all the places that are before us 
we shall either be delivered by Christ 
or be conquerors in Christ. 
What does it matter which, — nay, is 
not the last way the best way ? Since 
our victory is made sure by His victory, 



ss perennials* 

why should we not '* rejoice when we 
are partakers of Christ^s sufferings '' ? 

Oh, how we talk of submission ! as if 
it were . . . the last refuge of de- 
spair instead of being what it is — the 
fulfilment and consummation of our 
life. As if you took the chisel which 
had been trying to carve by itself, and 
put it in the hand of Michael Angelo, 
so, only infinitely higher, is it when 
you teach your soul to say, *' O Lord, 
not my will but Thy will be done/' 
/Ifbarcb ^vvent^=nlntb» 

It is the portion and duty of every 
man who knows himself to be the child 
of God, to claim the highest and di- 
vinest of his Father's helps for all his 
most immediate and ordinary needs. 
What a great thing life would become 
if we did that ! 



/IDarcb* 39 

/IBarcb Zbivtictb. 

Christ taught the world that no 
struggle after righteousness was so ob- 
scure, and no search after truth was so 
blind and stumbling, that it might not 
call on the Eternal Righteousness and 
the Eternal Truth, and be sure that 
they would hear the cry. All hunger 
knows its right to the Bread of Life. 

^arcb XLbnt^^flvet. 

The Cross is the perpetual glorifica- 
tion of the shortness of life. In its 
light we, too, can stand by the depart- 
ing form of our own life or of some 
brother's life, and say, *' It is finished/' 
and know that the finishing is really a 
beginning. The temporary is melting 
away like a cloud in the sky, that the 
great total sky may be seen. 



aptil 3f (t0t 

Gravity is not inconsistent with the 
keenest perception of the ludicrous side 
of things. It is more than consistent 
with — it is even necessary to — humor. 
Humor involves the perception of the 
true proportions of life. . . . You 
cannot encourage it too much. 

Bpril Second* 
The partial and imperfect and tem- 
porary are always being taken away 
from us and buried, that the perfect 
and eternal may arise out of their tombs 
and bless us. 

Bprll a:bir^ 

The force of all spiritual life is the 
love of God for man. ... It is 
40 



HptiL 41 

the fact which Hes back of everything, 
the lake on the calm summit of the hill 
above the clouds, out of which all the 
streams flow down. 

Bprtl ifouttb* 

All men who live the full life will 
have their hours of mystical experience, 
and will sometimes invoke the aid of 
arbitrary disciplines ; but their real cul- 
ture will be in the daily duties of their 
lives, and will show its result in the 
deepening and strengthening of those 
primary qualities of humanity which 
all men recognize and honor. 

Bpril mttb. 

The beautiful completeness of the 

world, in which there comes no love 

without its duty, and no duty without 

its love ! 

Bprtl Stjtb. 

Creation widens in the view of the 



42 {Perennials, 

man to whom Christ comes not merely 
in the light but in the dark. . 
New truths of spiritual life come out 
like stars. 

april Seventh. 

As Christ, by His self-sacrifice, en- 
tered into the company of man, so 
there is a self-surrender by which man 
enters into the company of Christ. 

Bprtl IBiQbtl). 

To say ** Well done! *' to any bit of 
work that has embodied good effort is 
to take hold of the powers which have 
made the effort and confirm and 
strengthen them. But if you have 
nothing to say to your child or your 
scholar except (what may be perfectly 
true) that much of his work is badly 
done, then you are coming to him not 
to fulfil, but to destroy. 



apriU 43 

Bprtl IRintb. 

Wisdom that shines like a star in the 
forehead, wisdom that wraps the form 
with dignity Hke a rich mantle, wisdom 
that burns with eloquence upon the 
lips, — these all men cannot have. If 
these are the true successes of a human 
life, then most human lives must be 
failures. But wisdom that enters as 
salvation into the heart, all men may- 
have. 

Bprll Zcntb. 

Get what support we may out of the 
essential dignity and spirituality of our 
work itself, still its great spiritual mean- 
ing must always be that it was given us 
to do by God our Father. That is its 
real beauty. That is its true glory. 

Bprtl JElevcntb* 
God is not a crutch coming in to help 
your lameness, unnecessary to you if 



44 perennials* 

you had all your strength. He is the 
breath in your lungs. The stronger 
you are, the more thoroughly you are 
yourself, the more you need of it. 

Bpril XLv0clttb. 

Great is the condition of a man 
who lets rewards take care of them- 
selves — come if they will or fail to 
come — but goes on his way, true to the 
truth simply because it is true, strongly 
loyal to the right for its pure righteous- 
ness. 

Bpril Zbivtccnlb. 

It is a most wanton presumption and 
pride for any man to dare to be sure 
that there is not some very important 
and critical place which just he and no 
one else is made to fill. It is almost as 
presumptuous to think you can do 
nothing as to think you can do every- 



HprfL 45 

thing. The latter folly supposes that 
God exhausted Himself when He made 
you ; but the former supposes that God 
made a hopeless blunder when He made 
you, which it is quite as impious for 
you to think. 

Bpctl jfourteentb* 

It is a strange thought to many, but 
it is a thought that grows very dear to 
the souls that really enter into it, that 
there was something in the crucifixion 
which it is our highest privilege to 
share. 

:aprt[ jfifteentb* 

It is a terrible thing when one's re- 
ligion is too small for the world, and is 
always leaving great parts of the world 
unaccounted for, unilluminated. It is 
a great thing when the world is too 
small for one's religion, and the soul's 
sense of the glory and dearness of God 



46 iperennlals* 

is always craving larger and larger 
regions in which to range. Then, wel- 
come all discoveries, all illuminations, 
all visions of the greatness of the world 
of God! 

Bprll Sijteentb* 
Be sure that God would rather . . . 
have you show your humility by the 
complete trust with which you take 
His mercy than by the distressed per- 
plexity with which you wonder whether 
it is possible for you to take it. 

Bprll Seventeentb. 
It is sad indeed when a man comes 
to that state in which each new day 
does not seem in some sense to begin 
the world anew, recalling every de- 
parted hope and brightening every 
faded color of the night before. . . . 
All live men covet the inspiration of 
beginning. 



HpriL 47 

SprtI Bl^bteentb, 
If Duty grows weak, it must climb to 
the fountainhead of Love and drink. 
If Love grows doubtful and hesitates, 
it must lean and steady itself on the 
strong staff of Duty. 

Bpttl mineteentb* 

Life is not life, freedom is not free- 
dom, unless the live thing is set in the 
ground of its true nourishment, and 
keeps open the connection with the 
Eternal Source of its strength. Man 
is not living except as he lives in God. 

april Uwentletb* 

Though the star should be quenched 
in a moment forever, it is good that 
the star should shine its brightest 
to the very last. This is the instinct 
of the brave and healthy heart that is 
faithful to its truest impulses. 



43 ipetenniala* 

It seems, sometimes, as if trouble, 
trial, suffering, were in the world like 
the old fabulous river in Epirus, of 
which the legend ran, that its wonder- 
ful waters kindled every unlighted 
torch that was dipped into them, and 
quenched every torch that was lighted. 

Bprtl u:went^5=6econ^^ 

If our answered prayers are precious 
to us, I sometimes think our unan- 
swered prayers are more precious still. 
Those give us God's blessings; these, 
if we will, may lead us to God. 

aprtl c:went^:5tbitD* 

Our affections and our indignations 
are the deepest part of us. . . . 
When they get to their deepest, and 
love God and hate all that dishonors 



HprfL 49 

Him. then the highest of all glories is 
reached, and heaven has nothing more 
to offer except higher rooms of this 
highest school into which the soul has 
now graduated. 

aprtl ^went^:sfourtb» 

The eye sees phenomena; the soul 

sees causes underlying the phenomena. 

It is not well to live and see 

only from the eyes and brain outward. 

Bptll XLvQcnt^^flttb. 

All truly consecrated men learn little 
by little that what they are consecrated 
to is not joy and not sorrow, but a 
divine idea and a profound obedience, 
which can find their full outward ex- 
pression not in joy and not in sorrow, 
but in the mysterious and inseparable 
blending of the two. 

4 



50 perennials* 

Bpril ^went^=6ljtb, 

I believe in those larger conceptions 
of life which men call vague. I must 
have some notion in general of what I 
am alive for, or I cannot live rightly 
from hour to hour, this evening and to- 
morrow morning. . . . Ten thou- 
sand men become machines from too 
narrow, where one becomes visionary 
from too large, theories of life. 

Bptil ^wenti^s^seventb. 

The poor blind world cannot tell its 
need, nor analyze its instinct, nor say 
why it seeks one man and leaves an- 
other; but through its blind eyes it 
knows when the fire of God has fallen 
on a human life. 

Bpril Zvocnt^^cigbth. 

The true disciple of God will be 
yielding enough in indifferent matters, 



HptfU 51 

but firm as a rock against the most 
time-honored abuses or iniquities. . . . 
He will be like a healthy plant that 
does not care about the color of the 
pot it grows in, but does care very- 
much about the quality of the earth 
out of which it has to feed its roots. 

Bprll trwenti2s=nintb. 

Let your highest needs plead with 
God to enlighten your lower nature. 
Pray for yourself, '* Lord, that I might 
receive my sight!'' For there are 
better things to see if you can only see 
them. 

aprll ^Tblrtletb* 

Do not despise the witness that even 
the meanest of people bear to your 
work. When it really rains, the pud- 
dles as well as the ocean bear witness 
of the shower. 



/Hbais Jffr6t 

Everywhere faith, or the capacity of 
receiving, has a power to claim and 
command the thing which it needs. 
And how these spring days 
bear us witness that the soil acknowl- 
edges this power ! — no sooner does it 
feel the seed than it replies ; it unlocks 
all its treasures of force ; the little 
hungry black kernel is its master. '* O 
seed, great is thy faith! '' the ground 
seems to say; *' be it unto thee even 
as thou wilt''; and so the miracle of 
growth begins. 

iflfta^ SeconD, 

We talk about the glory of resigna- 
tion to the inevitable, . . . but 
the true glory is in resignation to the 
52 



evitable. To stand unchained, with 
perfect power to go away, with perfect 
certainty that no man will drive you 
back, to stand held only by the in- 
visible chains of higher duty, and, so 
standing, to let the fire creep up to the 
heart — that is the truer heroism. And 
there are men and women whom we 
meet every day . . . who are doing 
that. 

The Christian is a man in the world. 
The difference between him and the 
man of the world must not be in the 
separation of all their occupations. It 
must be in the different ways in which 
they hold their worldly things. 

Aa^ jfourtb^ 

Strong action can issue only from 
strong faith. Only out of certainty 
comes power. 



54 perennials* 

If there is a special form and an un- 
seen purpose to every life, then there is 
always the hope that though the form 
may be broken, the purpose of the life 
may yet fulfil itself in some other way, 
even in spite of, — nay, through the 
breakage of the form. 

The more we watch the lives of men, 
the more we see that one of the reasons 
why men are not occupied with great 
thoughts and interests is the way in 
which their lives are overfilled with 
little things. 

flba^ Seventb* 

It is only by entering into the higher 
anxieties.of Jesus that one can be freed 
from the lower anxieties of men. You 
must care with all your soul that God 



/IDai?. 55 

should be glorified, and that men 
should be saved. If you can do that 
you are free. 

Faithfulness to one's work may be 
only an outside bondage, but joy in it 
is a relationship of heart to heart — of 
the heart of the man to the heart of 
his task. 

/liba^ Wntb* 

To do your work because you must; 
to do your work as a slavery ; and then, 
having got it done as speedily and 
easily as possible, to look somewhere 
else for enjoyment, — that makes a very 
dreary life. No man who works so 
does the best work. 

/Ilba^ XLcntb. 
Many and many a time the child 
within us prays while the man in us 



56 perennials* 

stands by and pities. The bright, 
simple, spontaneous impulses go out 
toward God, fly up to heaven, while 
dull, earth-bound habits cling to the 
ground. 

/IIbai3 Bleventb. 

Let us try, if we are really Christians 
who believe that our Lord has ascended 
into heaven, to enter into His heavenly 
life by the largeness and loftiness of 
the prayers that we bring to Him. 
. . . Not comfort, not spiritual rest, 
not freedom from pain here or here- 
after, — not these, but the chance, the 
power, the will to glorify God our Fa- 
ther in our lives as He, the perfect 
Son, did in His — this we may ask. 

/Hbai^ ^welttb* 

The true horror of the judgment-day 
will be the making manifest of hearts. 



/IDa^. 57 

What I have done will fade before the 
preeminent shame of what I have been. 
Then, deeds will take their true places 
as mere fruits and types of character. 

/nba^ trbirteentb* 

There are many men who would go 
to China for a brother if he needed it, 
who will hardly go down the street for 
him without grumbling, — men who 
would give up their lives and never 
think of it, but find it very hard to 
give five minutes for a friend. 

/Ilba^ jfourtcentb^ 
Set what little faith you have to 
doing its best work, so it will grow to 
more. Make more of what you do be- 
lieve than of what you do not believe. 

/Dba^ jfittecntb^ 

Do not so misread history that it 
shall seem to you, when you try to do 



s8 perennials^ 

right, as if you were the first man that 
ever tried it. Put yourself, with your 
weak Httle struggle, into the company 
of all the strugglers in all time. See in 
the perpetual struggle of good and evil 
that the impulse after good is eternal, 
and the higher needs are always assert- 
ing their necessity. In their persistent 
assertion read the prophecy of their 
final success, and take courage. 

/Ilba^ Siitccntb. 

Happiness is the natural flower of 
duty. The good man ought to be a 
thoroughly bright and happy man. 

flRas Scvcntecrxtb. 

Quickly or gradually the man who 
has begun to live more seriously within, 
begins to live more simply without. 

jffiai^ El^bteentb* 
It is your privilege and mine, as chil- 



/iDap* 59 

dren of God, to be satisfied with no 
help but the help of the highest. 
When we are content to seek strength 
or comfort or truth or salvation from 
any hand short of God's, we are disown- 
ing our childhood and dishonoring our 
Father. 

/IBai2 1fttnetcentb» 
No ship can tempt the sea and learn 
its glory, so long as she goes moored 
by any rope, however long, by which 
she means to be drawn back again if 
the sea grows too rough. The soul 
that trifles and toys with self-sacrifice 
never can get its true joy and power. 

/IBa^ Zvocntictb. 

There are faiths, and they have been 
very many and very powerful, whose 
gaze was backward. . . . Chris- 
tianity is full of hope. It looks for the 
ever richer coming of the Son of Man. 



6o perennials* 

It lives in sight of the towers of the 
New Jerusalem which fill the western 
sky. Therefore it has been the religion 
of energy and progress everywhere and 
always. 

The Holy Spirit may help us, will 
surely help us, just as far as He can, 
even if we do not know His name or 
ever call upon Him. But there is so 
much more that He might do for us if 
we would only open our hearts and ask 
Him to come into them. 

/Bbas a:went]2:sgeconD^ 

As we come to God the Holy Ghost, 
we come to one another. He is the 
constructive principle and power in 
human life. By Him every society of 
good men is bound together. 



/IDai?* 6i 

The window which makes itself dark, 
darkens not merely itself, but also all 
the room into which the light might 
have shone through it. 

As you grow better you sweep up 
out of the grasp of money, praise, ease, 
distinction ; you sweep up into the ne- 
cessity of truth, courage, virtue, love, 
and God. The gravitation of the earth 
grows weaker, the gravitation of the 
stars takes stronger and stronger hold 
upon you. On the other hand, as you 
grow worse, as you go down, the high- 
est necessities let you go, and the 
lowest necessities take hold of you. 
Still, as you go down you are judged 
by what you can do without and what 
you cannot do without. You come 
down at last where you cannot do 



62 perennials^ 

without a comfortable dinner and an 
easy bed, but you can do without an 
act of charity or a thought of God. 

The spirit of practicalness is the con- 
secration of the whole man, even the 
most ideal and visionary parts of him, 
to the work of life. 

All woe is one at its heart, and all 
divine help is one ; and so any helpful- 
ness in man which really comes from 
God can be something to, can do some- 
thing for, any possible suffering which 
comes across its path. 

/llbai^ Zvocnt^^BCVcntb. 

The outlook into mystery has even a 
stronger intellectual influence than the 
inspection of discovered fact. 



/IDa^. 63 

To believe in the sun and not in the 
eye, to believe in the sweetness of 
honey and not in the power of taste, to 
believe in the God over and around us 
and not in the God within us, — that 
would be a powerless and fruitless faith. 
But to believe in God the Son and God 
the Spirit too, ... to believe in 
ourselves through the divine presence 
which we are capable of receiving and 
containing, — that completes the faith 
of man. 

/Dba^ ;rwent^=ntntb* 

We hear so much about the danger 
of wrong thinking and wrong doing: 
there is the other danger of not doing 
right and not thinking right, — of not 
doing and not thinking at all. 

/Hba^ XTbirttetb* 
By purer life, by finer aspirations, by 



64 perennials* 

heartier hatred of corruption, let us be 
worthy of them, and in our quiet duties 
build the true memorial of those who 
found their duty in the camp, the 
prison, and the field, and where they 
found it did it even to the death. 

/aba^ C:birt^=fir6t» 
That glorious millennium for which 
we sigh . . . will consist not in 
the transformation of men into angels, 
nor in the coming forth of a few colos- 
sal men to be the patterns and the 
champions of life, but in each man, 
through the length and breadth of the 
world, doing his best. 



5une fitet. 

If, as we profess to believe, right is 
forever antagonistic to all wrong, then 
what a lesson there is for us in the 
steadfast law and faithfulness of all the 
universe around us! How each day 
coming to its task of crowded labors, 
each night bringing in its blessed peace 
of sleep, brings with it a remonstrance 
against our faint-heartedness and con- 
stant wavering of loyalty and truth ! 

3-une SeconD* 
Of the love of God what shall we 
say ? He wove its records everywhere. 
He spun it in the color of the lily and 
made us hear it in the noiseless fall of 
the sparrow. He made all sorrow and 
joy to be its ministers. And then at 
5 65 



66 iperennials* 

last He hung it on a Cross so high that 
no pride could tower so high as to 
overlook it, so low that no most abject 
humility could fall so low as not to be 
within its light. This is what Jesus 
did. He touched the world with His 
life, and made it everywhere a lumi- 
nous utterance of God. 

June ZTbirD* 

To be always living with One whose 
kingdom is not of this world — how this 
breaks up and scatters the littleness of 
life, the bondage of the seen ! 

June jfourtb* 
It is in our best moments that we are 
most genuinely ourselves. Oh, beheve 
in your noblest impulses, in your purest 
instincts, in your most unworldly and 
spiritual thoughts ! O mercenary mer- 
chants, O clerks and shop-boys, over- 



June* 67 

whelmed and stunned by the clamorous 
details of business life, you see your 
true self when you believe that the best 
and purest moment which ever came to 
you is only the suggestion of what you 
were meant to be and might be all the 
time. Believe that, O children of God ! 

5une jftttb. 
I do some work for my fellow-men 
to-day, and I am a better fulfilment of 
the purpose that God had in my exist- 
ence; I come to a fuller completion of 
myself; I am fitter for some of the 
work that this great hungry, needy, 
crying world demands. 

June Sijtb* 

'* Lord, that we might receive our 
sight." How deep these words are! 
Our sight! — a sight which, though we 
never saw with it, is really ours, — the 



6S perennials* 

sight with which we were made to see. 
Not once in all the Gospels is 
it written that Christ passed by a prayer 
like that and did not answer it. 

June Scvcnib. 

O the people of privilege! . . . 
how they behave like children to whom 
have been given jewels that might 
glorify and enrich the world, but who 
use them only to deck out their foolish 
baby-houses. Oh, for some voice of 
Christ to come to them and say, *' Ye 
are the light of the world. * * 

June lEiQbtb, 

*' In all time of our prosperity,*' we 
may well pray, *' good Lord, deliver 
us.'* Deliver us not only from its mis- 
chiefs, but set us free for its true use. 
Give us grace to grow by 
every privilege more strong for God*s 



June* 69 

glory and honor, more pitiful of brother 
men, and more ready for the change 
when the day darkens and panic comes 
where peace is now. 

Jxmc mtntb* 

Death is the enlightener. The es- 
sential thing concerning it must be that 
it opens the closed eyes, draws down 
the veil of blinding mortality, and lets 
the man see spiritual things. 

5une Jlcntb. 
You must learn, you must let God 
teach you, that the only way to get 
rid of your past is to get a future out 
of it. God will waste nothing. There 
is something in your past — something, 
if it be only the sin of which you have 
repented — which, if you put it into the 
Saviour's hands, will be a new life to 
you. 



70 perennials* 

June Eleventb. 

Never let the seeming worthlessness 
of sympathy make you keep back that 
sympathy of which, when men are suf- 
fering around you, your heart is full. 
Go and give it without asking yourself 
whether it is worth the while to give it. 
It is too sacred a thing for you to tell 
what it is worth. God, from whom it 
comes, sends it through you to His 
needy child. 

June Zwclttb. 

The best and bravest things that we 
are called to do need something more 
than this life to complete and justify 
themselves in. 

June O^birteentb* 
The elaborateness of life makes cow- 
ards of us. It is not the bigness of the 
sea, but the many mouths with which 



June* 71 

it mocks his feebleness, that makes the 
strong swimmer grow afraid and sink. 
We want to find some one thing which 
we are sure of, and tie our Hves to that, 
stand strong upon it to buffet off our 
fears. 

June 3Fourteentb» 
I believe our lives are too prosaic ; I 
think we all might live up in purer air. 
. . . We all have more poetry in us 
than we use. 

June 3Fitteentb» 

If it be poetry, as I think it is, to 
go out to-morrow morning with all our 
closets open and all our moral enginery 
in play, ready to see the miracle that 
the sun will bring up over the river and 
the hills once more, ready to learn the 
lesson of the earth, — a work to do and 
manly strength to do it, — ready to 



72 perennials* 

sympathize with and love and worship 
all that is worthy of our sympathy and 
homage, ready to grow more human in 
our charity for man, ready to grow 
more godlike in our reverence for God, 
— if this be poetry, then fifty poems 
may begin to-morrow, with earth's 
music for them all to sing to, and 
heaven at last to crown the victor with 
a sweet '* Well done! '* 

June Sl^teentb^ 

Let every dissatisfaction with the 
present be made not a discouragement, 
but an inspiration, by the continual 
consciousness of the great law of eter- 
nal growth. 

June Seventeentb^ 

There is no hardest, commonest, and 
cheapest thing which, living in simple 
healthiness and self-respect, may not 



June* 73 

become the gathering point and mani- 
festation point of the most infinite 
celestial light, no stone that may not 
make an altar. 

June JSiQbtccntb, 

The very certainty that the world 
must be saved by the faithfulness of 
commonplace people is what is needed 
to rescue such people from common- 
placeness in their own eyes, and clothe 
their lives with the dignity which they 
seem so wofully to lack. 

June IRlneteentb^ 

You can keep a faith only as you 
can keep a plant, by rooting it into 
your life and making it grow there. 

June ^wenttetb* 
Many and many an experience there 
is in this world which gives us the right 
to believe that happiness is something 



74 perennials* 

very coy and wilful, which, when we 
chase it, runs away from us; but, when 
we turn away from it and seek for 
something better, changes its mind 
and chases us. 

June (Twcnt^srfirste 
It is good to touch many people and 
to see many sights ; but it is good, it is 
necessary, to be content with no ex- 
perience which remains simply an expe- 
rience and does not pass on and into 
character. . . . The experienced 
man is happy if he has really drunk the 
rain and sunshine of the experiences 
which have come to him into his heart, 
and is the ripened man ; otherwise he is 
only like the rock on which every 
passer-by has scrawled his name. 

June G:wenti^*6econD* 
Pray the largest prayers. 
Pray not for crutches but for wings. 



June. 75 

Oh! do not pray just that God will 
keep you from breaking down, and 
somehow, anyhow, help you to stagger 
and stumble through, — pray for His 
light and life to come and fill you, that 
you may live like Him, that you may 
tread temptation under foot and walk 
across it into holiness; that you may 
be enthusiastically good, that you 
may shine forth with His light on other 
lives. 

June TLvocnt^^^tbitb. 

Be more afraid of the littleness than 
the largeness of life. 

5une ^went^s^touttb* 

The originality of John the Baptist 
consisted not in the structure of his 
own life, or its ability to send out 
power from itself, but solely in the way 
in which it caught the life of Christ and 



76 perennials* 

made that influential in the world. 
. . . The power of the mirror is 
only that it caught the sun on a pecu- 
liar surface and flashed it in a new 
direction, on a new level, in the eyes 
of men. 

June n:wcnt^:5fittb* 
You never did a sin that did not give 
its warning to you before you did it. 
. . . No man grows to be more 
than a mere boy without learning on 
what side of his moral nature he will 
fall if he falls at all. Every one of us 
knows, who is in the least thoughtful, 
what sort of a villain he would be if he 
grew villainous. 

5une a:wents=6ljtb» 
The real thing that I am, let me de- 
termine that that shall be God's, and 
there is no power in the universe that 
can pluck it away from Him. 



June^ 77 

June XLvccnt^^^scvcntb. 
I cannot but think that in heaven 
there will be tasks unspeakably harder 
than any of the little trifles that we do 
here, and yet we shall not groan over 
them any longer, but do them with 
angelic ease ; for the heavenly task will 
make heavenly men with heavenly 
strength. 

June ^went^ssefgbtb^ 
Do not pray for easy lives ; pray to 
be stronger men. Do not pray for 
tasks equal to your powers; pray for 
powers equal to your tasks. 

June xrwent^s:ntntb. 
Christ never was impatient with His 
disciples. He could wait till the Peter 
who paraded his genuine but feeble 
resolution at the Supper grew to be 
the Peter who could die for Him at 



78 iperennials* 

Rome, and live with Him in some high 
doing of His will in heaven. 

5une Zbittictb. 
Enjoyment and suffering are the 
right and left hand of the same Father. 



5ul^ Jfiret 
If your Christian service is too small 
in its degree for you to boast of, it is 
too precious in its kind for you to be 
ashamed of. 

Could not Christ have answered your 
prayer ? No, He could not. . . . 
The thing you asked for was not the 
absolutely best, and therefore He could 
not give it. Back of how many unan- 
swered prayers lies that divine impos- 
sibility ! 

Men think that they can be safe 

without being helpful. ... It is 

not the hands that catch us and hold 

on to us, it is the hands of helpkss 

79 



8o iperennials* 

men which we shake off in our selfish- 
ness, that drag us down. 

5ul^ jfourtb. 
May I ask you to linger while I 
. . . recall to you the sacredness 
which this day — the Fourth of July, 
the anniversary of American Independ- 
ence — has in the hearts of us Ameri- 
cans ? To all true men the birthday of 
a nation must always be a sacred thing. 
For in our modern thought the nation 
is the making-place of men. 

3\xl^ jfittb* 
Alas for the nation or the citizen that 
does not learn that . . . liberty of 
itself makes no people and no man 
prosperous or good ; that self-restraint 
and honesty and generosity and inde- 
pendence, if they are the crown upon 
the head of a benignant despotism, are 



JUll?^ 8i 

the very life-blood in the veins of a self- 
governing republic. 

5ul^ Sijtb. 
When I think how our lives might be 
psalms, how, going on after our Master, 
we might be filled with the joy of 
honoring such a Leader and entering 
daily into such a Life, — then these 
days which we do live, even the very 
best of them, seem dull and spiritless. 
By all your dissatisfactions, by every 
glimpse that you have ever had that 
you were made for better things, I call 
on you to open your eyes to the taw- 
driness, the ugliness, of a worldly life ! 

5ul^ Seventb. 
Before you burns the Beauty of Holi- 
ness. Perfectly independent of our 
temporal conditions, shining alike in 
rich and poor, not quenched by trouble, 



82 iperennfals* 

not outshone by joy, visible to God 
even when no man sees it, and at last 
made clearer and not dimmer by the 
river that we all must cross — that is 
possible for every one of you. 

5ul^ JBiQbtb. 

No level-eyed intercourse of sinless 
man with sinless Christ could have 
wrought in us such a profound and 
precious sense that we belong to Him 
as the simple knowledge that we need 
Him. Need has its sacred rights. 

3m mintb* 

All the while keep the upward win- 
dows open. Do not dare to think that 
a child of God can worthily work out 
his career, or worthily serve God's other 
children, unless he does both in the 
love and fear of God. 



5Ull?^ 83 

5ul^ XLcntb. 

True spotlessness from the world 
must not come negatively, by the gar- 
ments being drawn back from every 
worldly contact, but positively, by the 
garments being so essentially, divinely 
pure that they fling pollution off; as 
sunshine, hurrying on its mission to 
the world, flings back the darkness 
that tries to stop its way. 

5ul^ Bleventb* 
There is no monotony of living to 
him who walks through even the quiet- 
est and tamest paths with open and 
perceptive eyes. The monotony of 
life — if life is monotonous to you — is 
in you, not in the world. 

Jul^ XLVQCUtb. 
It is a very wide law and a very 
beautiful one, that the best way to 
make a thing fit for the use for which 



84 iperennials* 

it was first made is to put it to that 
use. The best way to make the dusty 
trumpet clear, is to blow music through 
it. The best way to make the sluggish 
mind capable of thinking, is to think 
with it. 

5ul^ G:birteentb* 

When the spring comes, the oak-tree 
with its thousands upon thousands of 
leaves blossoms all over. . . . The 
great heart beats, and wherever the 
channels of a common life are standing 
open the rich blood flows, and out 
on every tip the green leaf springs. 
Somewhat in that way, it seems to 
me, we may think of God's remem- 
brance of His million children. . . . 
They are far-off leaves on the great 
tree of His life ; far off, and yet as near 
to the beating of His heart as any leaf 
on all the tree. 



3uli?* 85 

5ul^ 3Fourteentb» 

Learn from your Saviour that no 
duty reveals itself until we approach 
it. The duty of death, when you 
approach it, will light itself up, you 
may be sure, and seem very easy to 
your soul. Till then, do not trouble 
yourself about it. To live, and not to 
die, is your work now. When your 
time comes, the Christ who conquered 
death will prove Himself its Lord, and 
pave the narrow river to a sea of glass 
for you to cross. The work of life is 
living, and not, as we are so often 
told, to prepare to die, except by 
living well. 

Juli^ jfttteentb. 

Not what we know so much as the 
way we know everything, not how 
much we know, but how do we know^ 
— that is the question that is significant. 



S6 perennials* 

Get the quality right, and an eternity 
of living in the light of God will take 
care of the quantity. 

S^uIis Sliteentb^ 
The Son of God is also the Son of 
Man. Then, in us, the sons of men, 
there is the key to the secret of His 
being and His work. Know Christ 
that you may know yourself. But oh ! 
also know yourself that you may know 
Christ. 

5uli2 Seventeentb. 

Our religion is not true . . . un- 
less the statesman taking it to Con- 
gress, the merchant taking it into 
business, the man or woman carrying 
it with them where they go in all their 
ordinary occupations and amusements, 
do indeed find it the power of purity 
and strength. 



5ttl^^ 87 

The ideal life is in our blood, and 
never will be still. We feel the thing 
we ought to be beating through the 
thing we are. 

3-ul^ mineteentb* 

Test your lives thus: Do not con- 
sent to be anything which you would 
not ask the soul that is dearest to you 
to be. Be nothing that you would not 
wish all the world to be. 

5uli2 Zvccntictb. 

Be profoundly honest. Never dare 
to say . . . one word which at the 
moment you say it you do not believe. 
It would cut down the range of what 
you say, perhaps, but it would endow 
every word that was left with the force 
of ten. 



88 perennials* 

5uli2 a:went^5=fir0t 

Just as the bird is a bird still although 
it cannot sing, and the rose is still a 
rose although its red grows dull and 
faded in some dark, close room where 
it is compelled to grow, — so the Chris- 
tian is a Christian still, even though his 
soul is dark with doubt, and he goes 
staggering on, fearing every moment 
that he will fall, never daring to look 
up and hope. 

3ul^ a:wenti25=0econD» 

The ordinary cheap philosophies 
assume that life is like a fire which 
speedily reaches the fulness of its heat, 
and then fades and goes out. The 
high philosophy which gets its light 
from God believes that life, as it moves 
deeper and deeper into God, must 
move from richness into richness 
always. 



5ul^. 89 

No true man can live a half -life when 
he has genuinely learned that it is a 
half-life. The other half, the higher 
half, must haunt him. 

The higher lives, the lives of con- 
scientiousness, certainly must be capa- 
ble of a freshness and a buoyancy that 
are wholly beyond the power of any 
light irresponsibility. . . . The 
full seriousness, the life lived at its 
deepest consciousness, is as full of joy 
as it is of soberness. 

5uls ^wents==fiftb^ 

The final test and witness of spiritual 
force is seen in the ability to cast the 
bodily life away, and yet continue to 
give help and courage and wisdom to 
those who see us no longer; to be, like 



90 perennials* 

Christ, the helper of men's souls be- 
yond the grave. 

Behind all the special things which 
Christ wanted men to do and be, be- 
hind all the great lessons which He 
wanted men to learn. He wanted men, 
first of all, to live. It is deficient vital- 
ity, not excessive vitality, which makes 
the mischief and trouble of the world. 

5ul^ ^went^=0eventb* 

All dead things are fruitless. Dead 
men tell no tales, but neither do they 
tell truths. The entrance of life is the 
beginning of effectiveness. 

5uls n:went^s:el9btb* 
There is a knowledge which is not 
light but darkness, just as there is a 
lustre on the surface of the ocean which 



5ul^. 91 

keeps you from seeing down into the 
ocean's depths. 

We know well enough what happi- 
ness is sent for; we know that its lesson 
is gratitude. O you who are anticipat- 
ing happiness, be sure that you get the 
culture of your anticipation. It is a 
great, solemn thing to be happy when 
all happiness — from the joy of health 
up to the bliss of salvation — all means 
a loving God. We are too frivolous 
about our joy. We go tinkling the 
bells that ought to ring with litanies. 

5ul^ C^birttetb* 
It will not do for any one of us to 
make up his mind that he cannot be 
any good and noble thing until first he 
has asked himself whether it is as im- 
possible in God's sight as it is in his. 



92 perennials. 

There is a great deal of danger of our 
forgetting that to believe much, and 
not to believe little, is the privilege and 
glory of a full-grown man. . 
There do come times when you must 
cut a tree down to its very roots in 
order that it may grow up the richer 
by-and-by, but a whole field of stumps 
is not the ideal landscape. 



august jfiteU 

If you think about the details of 
your work as if there were nothing be- 
yond them, you grow special, narrow, 
petty. If you can do it for God, in 
perfect, childlike, loving desire for His 
glory, then your work, be it as heavy 
in its nature as it may, leaps itself from 
the low ground and carries you every 
day into the presence of the God for 
whom you do it. That is the continual 
beauty of a consecrated life, — possible 
under all sorts of circumstances, possi- 
ble to every kind of man in every kind 
of task. 

august SeconD, 

Insist that your buying or selling or 
studying or teaching shall itself make 
93 



94 iperennials^ 

you brave, patient, pure, and holy! 
Seek your life's nourishment 
in your life's work. 

Bugu0t ZhM. 
Let me feel that nothing but this 
moment depends upon this moment's 
action, and I am very apt to let this 
moment act pretty much as it will. 
Let me see the spirits of the moments 
yet unborn standing and watching it 
anxiously, and I must watch it anx- 
iously for their sakes. 

auguet jfourtb* 
Listen to the great modern Gospel 
of Work that comes to you on every 
breeze, but do not let it be the shal- 
low, superficial story that it is to many 
modern ears. Work is everything or 
work is nothing according to the lord 
we work for. Work for God. 



august 95 

august 3fittb» 
The escape from narrowness must not 
be in the worker refusing to do one 
work and undertaking to do all things, 
it must be in his doing his one thing 
in a larger spirit. 

Bugu6t Sljtb* 
Let no spiritual exaltation come to 
you without your lifting yourself up in 
its present power and doing some work 
for God which in your lower moods has 
scared you with its difficulty. For 
duty is the only tabernacle within 
which a man can always make his 
home upon the transfiguration moun- 
tain. 

Buguet Seventh. 

Our only hope of strength and peace 
lies in knowing that there is One 
whom nothing disappoints and nothing 
amazes. 



96 petennfals* 

Pray for and work for fulness of life 
above everything, — full red blood in 
the body, full honesty and truth in the 
mind, and the fulness of a grateful love 
for the Saviour in your heart. 

Umnet mtutb. 

Love God with all your mind. . . . 
When the procession of your powers 
goes up joyfully singing to worship in 
the temple, do not leave the noblest of 
them all behind to cook the dinner and 
tend the house. Give your intelligence 
to God. 

BuQust ^entb* 

Tempests and meteors are but the 
culminating points of processes that are 
at work upon the calmest days. It is 
while you are doing a thousand little 
duties in the fear of God that you are 
slowly growing into familiarity with 



HugUSt 97 

Him. It is while you are patiently 
toiling at little tasks that the meaning 
and shape of the great whole of life 
dawns upon you. It is while you are 
resisting little temptations that you 
are growing strong. 

auQU0t iBlcvcntb. 

Christ not only lived with a purpose, 
but He died with a purpose too. 
Death seems so purposeless to most 
men! . . . Their plans have just 
vitality enough to last this life out, 
but they are not vital enough, not 
spiritual enough, to spring across the 
gulf and be at home on the other side. 
It is possible to have the aim of life so 
pure and spiritual that it may serve us 
as well in dying as in living. 
Bu^u6t ^welttb* 

Learning has its dangers, but their 
cure is not in ignorance. Forward, not 



98 iperennials* 

backward, into greater life; forward, 
not backward, into greater knowledge, 
not into less; — there, there only, lies 
the safety of the man or of the world. 

august Zbixtccntb. 

If any so-called discovery which men 
are teaching me to-day is really true, 
God has known it all along. 

BuQUBt jFourteentb* 

It is not our fortune in life, our sor- 
row or our joy, it is the explanation 
which we give of it to ourselves, the 
depth to which we see down into it, 
that makes our lives significant or in- 
significant to us. 

Bu0U6t jFitteentb* 

He who begins without counting the 
cost comes to sorrow, but he who in- 
sists on having every dollar in his hand 
before he starts never begins. 



Hugust 99 

august Sijteentb* 
The world is growing better; I know 
it. . . . And yet behold how the 
good causes fail ! Behold how selfish- 
ness comes in to paralyze every great 
endeavor for the good of man ! Alas 
for him who only sees this surface fact, 
who does not feel beneath it all the 
heave and movement of the whole race 
forward toward goodness, toward God ! 

august Sevcntccntb. 

" This statue is beautiful," we say. 
How do we know that ? No argument 
can prove it to us ; . . . the essen- 
tial demonstration must come directly 
from the beautiful thing to our power 
of perceiving beauty. The spiritual 
must be spiritually discerned. 

august Etgbteentb^ 

If God may present Himself to me 
over the ruins of my fallen work as He 



loo perennials* 

never could have entered in by its 
stately and well-built gates, and so the 
purpose of my life may be attained in 
all the failure of its form ; — then, 
surely, there is consolation — the con- 
solation upon which the bravest and 
most successful of us have to fall back 
a thousand times — the promise of re- 
pair which, though it never can make 
the breakage of a life seem trivial, may 
prevent it from seeming fatal. 

au^uet IFllnetecntb* 

Man is made to be happy and to seek 
happiness. The only difference in men 
is that some seek low happinesses and 
some seek higher. He seeks the high- 
est who mounts up to God's stand- 
point, and says sublimely, '* God made 
me for some duty. To do that duty, 
to fulfil that end, must be my na- 



Hugust loi 

ture*s highest perfectness, and so my 
nature's highest joy/' 

Bugu6t Zvpcntictb. 

Not only the needy child who is 
going in a moment to beg for his daily 
bread, but the sinful child whose lip is 
already trembling with the prayer for 
forgiveness, begins his petition with the 
claim of the son upon the Father. In 
that idea alone the possibility and priv- 
ilege of prayer grow clear. 

Bu9U6t ZwcntyQ^Utst 

The man who has lived to make 
money cannot die so as to be a little 
richer. But the man who has lived to 
be good and to do good, sees those 
ambitions that have led him all the 
way grow brighter as his way draws 
near its close. They never burned so 
brightly as when he sees them just 
across the River! 



102 perennfala 

A torrent drowns the soil which a 
rain would make fertile. There is such 
a thing as a soul gorged with blessing 
and not fed. 

august ^went^=tbirD» 

Go, do your duty, giving to every 
task the sublimest motive which you 
know and which you can bring to bear 
upon it. Get at the essence of good- 
ness, which is not in its enthusiasms or 
delights, but in the heart of its conse- 
cration. 

Bu0U6t ^went^^tourtb^ 

The world, as it goes on, is to be- 
come vastly more individualistic than 
it has ever been yet. Every soul is to 
feel the awful sweetness of being com- 
missioned by God to live, and of being 
different from every other life. 



Hugust 103 

If the world is making us worse, then 
not to change the world but to be 
changed ourselves is what we need. 
We must be regenerate by Christ, and 
then the world shall become His school- 
room, by all its ministries bringing us 
more and more perfectly to Him, 

BuguBt n:wenti5^5ljtb» 

History delights in the little, insig- 
nificant people who have turned the 
world's tides; and religious history has 
nothing of which she so delights to tell 
as the way in which the little have led 
the great to Christ. 

auQuet trwent^s=0eventb» 
The greater men grow in the truest 
greatness, the more and not the less 
they should come near to their fellow- 
men. . . . The cloud forms around 



104 iperennfals* 

the mountain peak, but once formed 
there, it floats away and drops its bless- 
ing upon many fields. 

auguet a:went^5=el^btb* 

To add each day some new stone to 
the structure whose lines already as they 
leave the earth prophesy an infinite 
height for the far top-stone, — he has 
not lived who has not felt this pleasure. 

Bugu6t ^went^s=ntntb* 

A large man lives in a social system 
and is helped by its spirit. A little 
man lives in the same system and is 
always afraid of violating its letter. 

Buguet ^birtletb. 
How many of our lives are feverish 
with the perpetual search after new 
things when the things which we have 
now are not exhausted ! Wonderful 
is he who takes us by the hand and 



Huoust 105 

leads us into regions of whose very 
existence we had not known before. 
This wonderfulness there certainly is 
in Jesus. More wonderful is he who 
on the old ground where we stand bids 
the mine open and the diamond shine, 
bids the fountain burst and the waters 
flow ; and it is this wonderfulness that 
makes Jesus truly and entirely the 
Saviour of the world. 

August XLbivt^^flveU 
The higher nature, through some of 
its deep needs or lofty impulses, is 
always trying to open the eyes of our 
lower and despondent nature to see the 
divine and hopeful powers which are at 
work upon our life. There is some- 
thing in all our temporalness and earth- 
liness which connects itself with eternity 
and the spiritual life. 



September jftret 
** Let both grow together until the 
harvest/' Are not these just the final 
words that we need ? For they declare 
that, however impossible now may be 
the separation of the evil from the 
good, however necessary it may be that 
they should thus go on inextricably 
mingled with each other, that is not an 
everlasting necessity. . . . More 
and more, as the wheat ripens, it must 
separate itself from the tares. More 
and more, as the man does right in 
danger, he grows out of the danger of 
doing wrong, until, beyond the mystery 
of death, that which began this side of 
it becomes complete, and, garnered 
into the barns of God, the wheat knows 
no more of the tares forever. 
1 06 



September^ 



107 



September SeconD* 

What God knows is one and the 
same with the love with which He 
loves and the resolve with which He 
wills. 

September XLbiv^. 

We do not pray God to love us; but 
we do pray that we may so see His 
love that we shall love Him back again, 
and be saved by loving. 

September jfourtb* 
Truth taught is not like a nail driven 
into a board, which remains forever 
the same nail that it was when it lay 
in the nail-box. It is the tree planted 
in the soil, which mingles its nature 
with the ground. 

September jftttb^ 
Time and work, not as a means of 
escape from distress, but as the hands 



io8 perennials* 

in which distress shall be turned hither 
and thither, that the light of God may 
freely play upon it, — time and work, so 
acting as the servants of God, not as 
substitutes for God, are full of unspeak- 
ably precious ministries to the suffering 

soul. 

September Sljtb* 

If mystery can make faith, and 
temptation can make fidelity, and 
pain can make patience, then the earth, 
which teems with all three, may be a 
very blessed place. 

September Seventb* 

Let yourself be helped by the noblest 
who can help you, that you may know 
the noblest with that intimate knowl- 
edge with which the helped knows the 

helper. 

September JEigbtb* 

Mean to be something with all your 

might. Do not add act to act and day 



September* 109 

to day in perfect thoughtlessness, never 
asking whither the growing line is 
leading. 

September IRlntb^ 
The starting arrow is only conscious 
of the string, not yet has it any percep- 
tion of the target. . . . It is only 
in going where the bowstring sent it 
that the arrow finds first the joy of 
rushing air, and then at last the satis- 
faction as it buries itself in the very 
centre of the target. We are God's 
arrows. Not because the end attracts 
us, but because He says to us *' Go! " 
must be the main motive of our going. 

September Zcntb. 
To make to-day's hard march, to 
fight to-day's hard battle, and leave 
the great campaign where it belongs, 
in the wise Captain's hands, — there is 
the only comfort, the only light, which 



no iperennfals* 

oftentimes seems left to us. And when 
we take it in profound humility, be- 
hold ! it is enough. 

September Elev^entb* 
To be able to obey ideas, to be free 
from self-consciousness, to be simple, 
— these are the secrets of courage. 

September tTwelttb* 
There are many troubles from which 
it is better for a man not to escape 
than to escape wrongly ; and there are 
difficulties in which it is better to 
struggle and to fail than to be helped 
by a wrong hand. 

September tlblrteentb^ 

You obey the master, and the art 
you wish to learn, and all the treasuries 
which his long years of study and toil 
have filled to overflowing, open their 
gates to you. . . . Let us glorify 



September* 



III 



obedience. It is not slavery, but mas- 
tery. He who obeys is master of the 
master whom he serves. 

September jfourteentb* 

There are no times in life when op- 
portunity — the chance to be and to do 
— gathers so richly about the soul as 
when it has to suffer. 

September jFlfteentb^ 
When we are simply asking ** What 
is right ? '* the answer always comes. 

September Sijteentb^ 

It is only when we know that any 
door capable of admitting any influence 
may admit the blessed influence of 
God, only then can we be hopeful of 
keeping the breadth and variety of life, 
and at the same time of always receiv- 
ing the culture and the grace of God. 



112 perennials. 

Let only the western shutters be open, 
and we shall only see the setting sun. 
Let all the windows be unclosed and 
expectant, and from sunrise round to 
sunset there shall be no interval in the 
unbroken light. The sun, in the course 
of the day, will look into them all. 

September Set^enteentb* 

O you who are to-day wondering 
where your faith has gone, remember! 
when God gave you faith He gave you 
also commandment. ... A duty, 
something to do, sprang into existence 
as the brother, the twin, of your belief. 
Did you bid them embrace ? Did you 
say to your faith, ** Go, justify and 
confirm your life by doing that V If 
you did not, it is no wonder that your 
faith has faded and is almost gone. 
. . . Do something with your re- 
ligion, and your religion will not die. 



September* 113 

September Eigbteentb* 

The true life must always be going 
up to the City of God. It must go 
there for its first total consecration. 
It must go there for its education. It 
must go there for its work. It must 
go there to catch sight of its promised 
victory. And at last it must go there 
for its final sacrifice and pain, which 
bring the end and the victory. Under 
every circumstance of life we go up to 
Him, and the gates of God are always 
open to us. . . . And every mood 
and time of life come to their best only 
as they enter into Him. 

September IFllneteentb* 

The lazy and labor-saving saint is a 
sinner. The man who is not vitally 
good is bad, for he is shutting his heart 
against the work of Him who came 
that men might have life. 



114 perennials* 

September Zvocntictb. 

While the disciples peered into the 
dark for Jesus, and said through the 
roaring of the storm to one another, 
*' Oh, if He were only here! '' was not 
that wish for Him a sort of presence of 
Him in their boat ? And so the man 
in doubt who prays for certainty, the 
man in weakness who prays for 
strength, the man in sin who prays for 
holiness, however the things he prays 
for may seem to delay their coming, 
has in the very struggle — the cry, the 
prayer, the hope — the spirit and an- 
ticipated power of the thing he prays 
for. 

September Zvocnt^^titet. 

Come to the Lord because He calls 
you, as Matthew came out of the shop 
where he was gathering taxes ; for only 
to the soul first giving itself to Him in 



September* 115 

unquestioning obedience can Christ 
give Himself in unhindered love. 

September Zvccnt^:^eccont>. 

It seems so far off, that Cross of 
Jesus, and it is really so near! For it 
is lifted up so high that the waves of 
time roll unmeaning at its foot. It is 
the power of perfection for us to-day. 

September Zvccnt^^tbitt>. 
It is a most inspiring thought that 
never yet did God put any high emo- 
tion into the soul of any of His children 
that God's world did not instantly 
stand before that child with a duty in 
its hand, saying, '' This is the task that 
belongs to your new emotion.*' 

September ZvQcnt^^tonxtb. 

The temporal life that is not allowed 
to open into the eternal life becomes cor- 
rupt and feeble even in its temporalness. 



ii6 perennials* 

September ^went^^sfittb. 

The home, school, and shop must be 
here on the fairest hillsides and plains 
of the world /or something. If we will 
not claim them for their best use, and 
by our use of them exalt them to their 
best explanations, we need not wonder 
at the low and godless explanations 
which men give of them. 

September ^went^s^efjtb* 

When men, asking for the means of 
grace, are pointed first of all to the 
duties and relations of their lives as the 
places where they will meet God, 
where they will find the deepest ex- 
periences, convictions of sin, utter 
humility, the need of Christ, and the 
ideal of holiness, — then how the dead 
earth and all that is upon it will glow 
with a fire that no materialism can 
quench! Till then, so long as we fail 



September* 117 

to use the world for spiritual culture, 
no wonder if it be dead ; and who cares 
whether the dead thing sprang from 
the hand of a Creator or took shape out 
of chaos by a force as dead as itself ? 

September Zvocnt^^ecvcntb. 

In the name of all you hope to know, 
cling close to what you know already. 
Make much of it, live up to it, hold it 
fast in the bosom of a loving life. 

September Zvocnt^^cigbtb. 

It is no dead, burnt-out cinder on 
whose breast we live. It is a live 
earth, registering in its vital changes 
all that men do, sympathetic, tremu- 
lous with vitality ; a world to honor and 
to reverence and to love, not to despise 
nor disgrace ; an earth for noble men to 
live noble lives upon ; an earth which. 



ii8 ipetenntals* 

being itself full of the life of God, must 
have true help to give to all those 
higher inspirations of His life which 
are in man. 

September Zvocnt^^nintb. 

A true acceptance of the whole Bible 
idea of ever-present spiritual life would 
not set us to watching for the appari- 
tions of the dead or for the sight of 
angels, but it would give us the strength 
which comes to every work and suffer- 
ing from the knowledge that this uni- 
verse is larger than it seems, and that it 
is all peopled with spiritual existences 
to enlighten and feed our life. . . . 
The brave man need not see any 
celestial form with spear and helmet by 
his side, yet he may know as he goes 
to the battle that the spirits of justice 
everywhere are sympathizing with him, 
and helping him in unknown ways. 



September* 119 

September a:birttetb* 

I am sure that God and His angels 
help many a struggler who does not 
know where the help comes from. 



October jFlret 

Believe that no man lives at his best 
to whom life is not becoming better 
and better, always aware of greater and 
greater forces, capable of diviner and 
diviner deeds and joys. 

<S>ctober SeconD* 
Was there ever a great disappoint- 
ment in your life which, even while you 
felt its weight pressing upon you, did 
not begin to turn that weight to wings 
and inspire you with a new freedom ? 

©ctober OTirD* 
Moral courage is nothing in the world 
but just the capacity for doing what we 
ought to do. Give that to every man, 
and only think with what a stir of eager 
and vivacious interest this dull world 



©ctober* 



121 



in which we are Hving would wake and 
start ! As when the prince came into 
the sleeping castle and kissed the prin- 
cess, and every sleep was broken, and 
the wheels of life began with clatter and 
delight, so would it be if duty, the 
best of all princes, should come in 
among us all. 

©ctobet jFourtb^ 
Men's awe of God seems to make 
their souls orphans by putting Him so 
far away. 

©ctober jfiftb. 
Narrowness is to be escaped not by 
deserting our special function, but by 
compelling it to open to us the things 
beyond itself. 

©ctober Sl^tb* 
In the centre of our life stands 
. . . the single Fountain out of 



122 iperenntals* 

which all sin and all uncleanness are to 
drink for healing. Every step that is 
not toward the Fountain is toward the 
desert. 

October Seventh. 

Your life will not always be unevent- 
ful. . . . The crisis will come. 
But the power of the crisis is here and 
now, in these days which you are ready 
to call dull and insignificant. Oh, if 
you could see how they are all bur- 
dened with criticalness ! 

©ctobet JBlQbtb. 

The law of straight things is just to 
let them grow ; they will grow straight. 
The law of crooked things must be to 
break and readjust them; otherwise 
the more growth, the more crookedness 
forever. . . . Given the fact of 
sin, the most gracious law becomes 



©ctoben 123 

this new law— the law of breakage 
and readjustment, the law of broken 
hearts. 

©ctober IRliitb* 
Sometimes there comes in all of us a 
strong, deep craving to give up this 
endless, complicated search after what 
is safe or proper or fashionable to be- 
lieve, and just to seek what is true; 
and to get rid of these thousand artifi- 
cial standards of what a man is ex- 
pected to do, and, come of it what will, 
simply do what is right. 

©ctober Zcntb. 

It is a noble and beautiful thing to 
feel ourselves outgrowing our con- 
tempts, to recognize each day that 
something which we have been despis- 
ing as poor is high and pure and rich 
in worth and beauty. 



124 perennials* 

October Eleventb. 
Even to His incarnate Son God gave 
life in slow development. What won- 
der if to us it comes with a slowness 
that makes us often despair; and yet 
when it does come completely, we 
shall know that except as it was thus 
slowly given it never could have been 
made really ours at all. 

©ctober XLvoclttb. 
The true thing comes when men of 
flesh and blood tread flat on solid 
ground ; and then imagination and 
poetry become the healthiest diet of 
the soul. . . . Such a soul travels 
fast. A moment's sunlight builds a 
bridge for it to leap to heaven up the 
shining stairs ; and then to come back 
again to earth and see its bright bridge 
broken into fragments, and go on sing- 
ing through the dark the snatch of 



®ctot)er* 125 

angel song it caught that moment 
while it stood in heaven, — do you say 
this man, be he old or young, is not 
strong ? 

©ctobet Zblvtccntb. 

However it may puzzle us to apply 
it to the lower, the promise is always 
true about the higher things: ** Give, 
and it shall be given unto you/* 

©ctober jFourteentb* 

One year, God lifted the curtain from 
a hidden continent, and gave His chil- 
dren a whole new world in which to 
carry out His purposes. 

©ctober ffitteentb^ 

When every material triumph is com- 
pelled to show some spiritual gain, 
some contribution to human character, 
then how much more life will mean! 



126 iperennfals* 

©ctobet Siitccntb. 

Submission is no cry of a defeated 
man ; it is the soul seizing on the privi- 
lege and right of being completed after 
God*s own pattern. 

©ctober Seventeentb* 

Through the gray pavement of the 
streets of Venice run two threads of 
white marble, by which the traveller, 
lost in the intricacy of the mighty city, 
cannot fail to find his way to the 
Rialto, where the centre of the city*s 
business lies. So through all education 
run these three threads [naturalness, 
practicalness, and nobleness] by which 
he who follows patiently shall come at 
last to where truth is most truly and 
richly taught and learned. 

October Bl^bteentb^ 

All duty must be its own revealer. 
No man comprehends any work that 



©ctober* 127 

God has given him to do till the com- 
ing task brings its own light with it. 

October mineteentb* 

Faith, walking in the dark with God, 
only prays Him to clasp its hand more 
closely, does not even ask Him for the 
lifting of the darkness so that the man 
may find the way for himself. 

©ctober ttwenttetb* 
The best glory of the most full exist- 
ence is in the overfilling of its fulness 
with the love and fear of God. 

October ^went^=ftr0t 

Soberly and with clear eyes believe 
in your own time and place. There is 
not, there never has been, a better 
time or a better place to live in. Only 
with this belief can you believe in hope 
and believe in work. 



128 perennials* 

©ctober ^went^rsseconD^ 

Religion is not by accident or chance, 
but by its own very nature, the hap- 
piest of Hves. Just so far as it ever 
grows sad and gloomy, it grows irre- 
ligious. 

October ?rwenti2*tbtrD» 
This notion of taking everything as 
God's gift, which so robs life of its 
sorrow, . . . is no foolish attempt 
to get rid of second causes. It is no 
fantastic effort to make believe that 
money is not to be won by industry, 
and knowledge gained by study, and 
friends by friendliness. But it is the 
everlasting feeling of the fountain be- 
hind the stream. 

©Ctober n^went^^stourtb* 
The unthoughtful person's talk is 
always gossip, which is always vulgar. 



©ctober* 129 

even if it deals with wars and revolu- 
tions. The thoughtful person^s talk is 
philosophical and interesting and ele- 
gant, even if it is about neighbors and 
servants. Wit and wisdom are not in 
subjects but in speakers. 

©ctober ^x^cnt^^tlftb. 

It is not in your silks and satins, not 
in your costly houses and your sump- 
tuous tables, that your unheroic lives 
consist. It is in the absence of great, 
inspiring ideas, of generous enthusi- 
asms, and of the courage of self-forget- 
fulness. 

©Ctober XLvocnt^^Biitb. 

I am to serve my fellow-men because 
they are God^s children; because, in 
the great, deep mystery of the words 
that Jesus spoke, when I am serving 
them I am serving Him. 



I30 Iperennials* 

©ctober Zvccnt^^ecvcntb. 
Discipline may come while you ex- 
pect suffering as well as while you 
suffer, if you are docile enough ; and 
then, when the suffering is reached, 
there is nothing there to terrify you, 
nothing but the '' peaceable fruits/* 

©Ctober llwentss=elgbtb» 

The object of God's giving us any 
gift is not that we may possess the gift, 
but that we may possess Him. . . . 
Therefore it is that the gifts are given 
only as they are required. Not once 
for all, so that we might take them on 
our shoulders and go away and forget 
the Giver, but day by day, so that each 
day the day's gift might make the Giver 
real, and so all life be filled with Him. 

©ctober ^vvent^^s^nintb^ 

Wonderful is that faith in faith by 
which the soul dares to be sure, even 



©ctober* 131 

in the very thick of doubt, that in be- 
Hef and not in unbelief is its eternal 
rest and home ! 

October XLbivtictb. 

Very many of the best and greatest 
things are dull and burdensome upon 
the surface, and they only lay hold 
upon us and enchain us when we get 
within the power of their hearts and 
souls. 

©ctober ^btrt^^sfirst 

Profusion, but no waste, — this is the 
lesson that Nature reads us everywhere. 
The dead leaves of this autumn are 
worked into next year's soil. The vast 
surrounding atmosphere is made effi- 
cient over and over again for the breath 
of living men. For men who need to 
be trained to reasonableness and care, 
God has built just the home that they 
needed for their training, and sent us 



132 perennials. 

to live in this star which shines among 
His other stars steadily and soberly 
with its double light of continuity and 
economy. 



tiovcm\)ct 3f tr0t 

The sainthoods of the fireside and 
the market-place ! — they wear no glory 
around their heads; they do their 
duties in the strength of God; they 
have their martyrdoms and win their 
palms; and though they get into no 
calendars, they leave a benediction and 
a force behind them on the earth when 
they go up to heaven. 

November SeconD. 

This we may know surely — that no 
man or woman can really be strong, 
gentle, pure, and good without the 
world being better for it, without 
somebody being helped and comfor- 
ted by the very existence of that 
goodness. 

133 



134 perennials* 

Movembec ZTbtrD* 

No Christ for priests and heroes only 
has He been, but rather a Christ who 
made a possible priest or hero of every 
man. 

Bopembet jfouttb* 

Only the last day shall tell how much 
of earth is hallowed ground! 

•Movember Jftttb^ 

The belief in God has always helped 
to prove to men that God exists. . . . 
There must be an external fact to which 
all this internal movement corresponds. 
Where all the needles turn there must 
be a pole. 

November Sljtb, 

There is a constant tendency, among 
the most earnest and conscientious 
people, to feel that the causes for 
which they live and work are their 



November* 135 

causes more than that they are God's 
causes. 

mov^ember Seventb* 

To know the best that we can learn 
of what is good for these seventy mil- 
Hons of the children of God, and to do 
what we can by our ballot and influence 
to secure it, — this is to work with God; 
and he who does it faithfully finds his 
political thought and labor a little 
sanctuary wherein God speaks to him, 
and gives him richly of His spirit. 

movember :Eigbtb^ 

The best advisers, helpers, friends, 
always are those not who tell us how 
to act in special cases, but who give us, 
out of themselves, the ardent spirit 
and desire to act right, and leave us 
then, even through many blunders, to 
find out what our own form of right 
action is. 



136 perennials* 

IRopembet IWtntb* 

If you cannot argue, live! Convic- 
tion comes through argument, but life 
comes through life. 

November Zcntb. 

The Cross shows not merely what 
Christ does, but what Christ is. The 
heart that beats against the Cross is not 
merely gathering unto itself Christ's 
mercy, but shaping itself upon Christ's 
character. 

Iftovember iBlcvcntb. 

There is a religion which finds the 
world unsatisfying, and so turns long- 
ingly, wistfully, pathetically, wearily, 
to God. There is another religion 
which finds the world wondrously 
beautiful and good, yet always sug- 
gesting something more beautiful and 
better than itself, and this rehgion, 



IRovembet* 137 

too, turns to God, but glowingly, 
springingly, hopefully. 

November XLvoclttb. 

Christ teaches us that there are not 
many goodnesses in the world, but 
only one Goodness ; and that any good- 
ness springing up to-day in any man's 
heart and taking some new, beautiful 
shape, is not a new creation ; it is but 
the transmitted goodness of the All- 
Good. There is but one light in the 
world, — not many, though there be a 
thousand colors. 

Viovcmbct XLbivtccntb. 

I think that, with all we know of the 
divine heart of Jesus, He would far 
rather see a soul trust Him too much, 
if that is possible, than trust Him too 
little, which we know is possible 
enough. 



13^ perennials* 

IFlov^ember jfourteentb* 
If the way to the Hght that never 
shall go out must lie through darkness, 
be thankful for the darkness. Be thank- 
ful that the brightness of pride and care- 
lessness have given place to the darkness 
of shame and struggle. . , . And 
yet be sure that darkness is not the end, 
that beyond it lies light, that to bring 
you out into light is the purpose for 
which alone God brings you or permits 
you to be brought into darkness. 

mox^ember fittccntb. 

We have not thought richly or deeply 
enough about any undertaking, unless 
we have. thought of it as an attempt to 
put into the form of action that which 
already has existence in the idea of God. 

IRovember Siitccntb. 

Always he who goes up to conquer 
peace and righteousness must burn his 



IRovember* 139 

ships and trust his whole Hfe to the 
land which lies so rich before him. 
Oh, the poor, weary, half-way Chris- 
tians, who play upon the fringes of the 
religious life, and are never quite sure 
that they will not turn back again and 
leave it all behind ! 

•Movembcr Seventeentb. 

Let us do what we ought and what 
we can for our own souls at once. For 
the judgment is coming not only at the 
last day, but all the time. 

IWovember Et^bteentb* 
Once stretch an infinite life behind 
our human lives, on which they rest, in 
which they belong, and how the ever- 
lasting contradiction between the little 
that we know already and the vast, un- 
certain bulk of v\^hat we do not know is 
robbed of its oppressiveness ! 



I40 perennials^ 

movember IFltneteentb* 

He is the true idealist, not who pos- 
sesses ideas, but whom ideas possess ; 
not the man whose life wears its ideas 
as ornamental jewels, but the man 
whose ideas shape his life as plastic clay. 

IRovember ^wentletb. 

There is a stingy caution which will 
do nothing for fear of doing wrong, 
and so does wrong all the time. But 
all the time the talent is the Lord's, 
to be used in obedience to Him. 

movember ttwent^sjfirgt 
The primary fact of duty lies at the 
core of everything. Operations which 
we think have no moral power, move by 
the power which is coiled up in that 
spring. 

IRovember Zvccnt^^BCCon^. 
Whatever men are feeling, the seasons 
come and go. . . . Men who dare 



IRovember. 141 

count on nothing else may still count on 
the tree's blossoms and the grape's color- 
ing. It is good for a man perplexed 
and lost among many thoughts to come 
into closer intercourse with Nature, to 
learn her ways and catch her spirit. 

IRovember ^wentigs=tbirD^ 

Nature is beautiful, and fellow-men 
are dear, and duty is close beside us, 
and God is over us and in us. What 
more do we want, except to be more 
thankful and more faithful, less com- 
plaining of our trials and our time, and 
more worthy of the tasks and privi- 
leges He has given us ? 

IRovembev ^went^^tourtb* 

Back of all the special causes for 
thanksgiving which our hearts recog- 
nize, is there a thankfulness for that 
on which they all rest and in which 
they are sewn like jewels in a cloth of 



142 iperennials* 

gold, — for the mere fact of human life, 
for the mere privilege and honor of 
being men and women ? 

movember Zv^cnt^^tittb. 

Jesus did not spend His life in try- 
ing not to do wrong. He was too full 
of the earnest love and longing to do 
right, to do His Father's will. Habit, 
which is the power by which evil rules 
us, is only strong in a vacant life. 

IRovember ^went^^ssijtb* 

Faith says not, ** I see that it is 
good for me, and so God must have 
sent it," but, *' God sent it, and so it 
must be good for me/' 

flovember XLx^cnt^^^ecvcntb. 

Just as the man who sees foliage 
knows that somewhere there must be 
water, although his eyes or ears cannot 



IRovember^ 143 

discern it, and the trees seem to grow 
out of the sand, — so the man who is 
sure that in any spot there is a duty for 
him to do knows that there is a happi- 
ness for him somewhere in the doing of 
that duty, even though for the present 
it seems to be a dreadful drudgery. In 
the expectation of that joy he works. 

IRovember Uvccnt^^cigbtb, 

Who can say how much of this which 
seems purposeless restfulness is really 
purposeful struggle ? The v/ild, con- 
fused waves are going somewhere. . . . 
Very much of what seems bad is only 
good unformed, and struggling under 
the power of the resurrection to its full 
development and exhibition. 

•Rovember XLvccnt^^nintb. 

Is it not wonderful to see how few 
sins in the world are done flatly, 



144 ipereunfals* 

blankly, as sins ? . . . Covetous- 
ness dresses itself in the decent robes 
of prudence, idleness calls itself inno- 
cence, prodigality goes garbed as gen- 
erosity, — they all masquerade through 
society and trap the souls of men. 
What if He came — the Spirit of all 
truth — and wiped out every false name, 
and wrote up every true one ? 

IRovember n:bittfetb* 

We talk about men's reaching through 
nature up to nature's God. It is noth- 
ing to the way in which they may reach 
through manhood up to manhood's 
God. . . . How large a part of 
our Godward life is travelled, not by 
clear landmarks seen afar off in the 
promised land, but as travellers climb a 
mountain-peak, by putting footstep 
after footstep slowly and patiently into 



IRovembet* 145 

the footprints which someone going be- 
fore us . . . has planted deep into 
the pathless snow. 



December jFitet 

If Christ sees reality, we can well 
understand how He can be patient with 
littleness. For where He stands, eter- 
nity is all in sight; He sees forever; 
He knows through what summer of 
cloudless sunshine the least grace will 
have time to ripen to the richest. He 
knows in what rich fields the seed will 
find eternal lodgment. So there is 
time enough if only the seed be real. 
If it be not real, eternity is not long 
enough nor heaven rich enough to bring 
it to anything. 

December SeconD* 
The power of any life lies in its ex- 
pectancy. ** What do you hope for ? 
what do you expect ?" The answer 
146 



December. 147 

to these two questions is the measure 
of the degree in which a man is Hving. 

December ^birD» 
As our souls stand waiting for their 
Deliverer . . . men are question- 
ing about Him ; they are asking, 
** Who is He ? " Let us have our 
answer ready : He is my Saviour. 
To know Him has been a new life 
to me. It has been salvation. Hence- 
forth not I live, but He liveth in 
me; and where He leads I will go, 
what He makes me I will be, now 
and forever. 

December jfourtb* 

Look at Christ. . . . His was 
the freest life man ever lived. He 
walked across old Jewish traditions and 
they snapped like cobwebs. He acted 
upon the divinity that was in Him up 



148 perennials. 

to the noblest idea of liberty. But 
was there no compulsion about His 
working? Hear Him: *' I must be 
about my Father's business/* Who 
does not pray that he, too, may be 
ruled by such a sweet, despotic law of 
liberty. 

December jflttb* 

All heaven is working for us if we 
will, as the little child digs his well in 
the sea-shore sand, and then the great 
ocean comes up and fills it for him. 

December Sijtb. 

* * Getting a living ! ' * Is it not one of 
the mortifying things to take now and 
then these words that we are using 
every day so lightly, and see how much 
they really mean; to wipe through the 
dust and rust upon these coin-words, 
which constant friction has worn so 



H)ecember* 149 

smooth and unimpressive, and look 
upon the royal image and superscrip- 
tion that is on them ? 

2)ecembec Qcvcntb. 

It is engine and steam that are to 
make the running power. It is artist 
and chisel that are to carve the statue. 
It is God and you that are to live your 
life. For you to try and live it alone 
is to try to do the work with one part 
of the power. 

December Et^btb* 

We worry if we violated an etiquette 
yesterday, and let the sins of yesterday 
go unrepented. We are indignant 
with other men*s vice and tolerant 
of our own. Our storms blow in the 
wrong places. Our calms come just 
where we need the healthy fury of the 
storm. 



ISO perennials* 

Decemfeer 1Rintb» 

Do not expect your religion to be 
hard. If there be hardness in it, count 
that hardness to be of your making, not 
of God's sending. 

December ^entb. 

The difference between the Bible 
with its tides of spiritual life and the 
modern novel with its narrow studies 
of human character and action, — as if 
they were the highest things in the 
universe, — this difference describes the 
dignity of a belief in living spiritual 
influences as contrasted with the low 
and unenterprising Sadduceeism to 
which our souls incline. 

December jElcvcntb* 
To live on, even when life seems all 
a failure and the comfort of life is gone, 
to count patient living the real thing, 



December* 151 

with or without comfort, — that is to be 
truly brave. 

2)ecember XL\>oc\ttb. 

Spiritual help comes to us when the 
tasks and duties of life show us their 
real purposes and meanings. 

December ITbirteentb* 
The only final comfort is God ; and 
He relieves the soul always in its suffer- 
ing, not from its suffering, — nay. He 
relieves the soul by its suffering, by the 
new knowledge and possession of Him- 
self which could only come through 
that atmosphere of pain. 

December jfourteentb^ 
Test the work that you are engaged 
in by seeing whether it needs, whether 
it is restless and cramped without the 
truth of an immortality. If it is not, 
if you can do your little fight just as 



152 perennials* 

well without any hope of eternity, be 
sure the fight you are at is a poor one. 

December jfitteentb* 

It seems as if the heroes had done 
almost all for the world that they can 
do ; and not much more can come till 
common men awake and take their 
common tasks. I believe the common 
man's task is the hardest. 

TDcccmbct St|teentb» 

The ship is out on mid-ocean, and it 
is midnight, and the storm is wild. 
The winds are savage, and the sea is 
terrible. We say the ship is struggling 
for her life. But, tell me, where was 
the real struggle of that vessel ? Was 
it not long ago on the hillside where 
her timbers grew, and in the ship-yard 
where her nails were driven. T/ien it 



H)ecembet. 153 

was decided whether she was to go to 
the bottom or come safely to her port. 
So, as I look forward, I can see you, 
on some day in the years to come, 
wrestling with the great temptation, or 
trembling like a reed under the great 
sorrow of your life — a temptation or 
a sorrow of which you have as yet no 
conception. The crisis may be years 
away. But the real struggle is not 
then, but now, here, on this quiet day 
and in these quiet weeks. Now it is 
being decided whether, in the day of 
your supreme sorrow or temptation, 
you shall miserably fail or gloriously 
conquer. 

December Seventeentb* 

The buttress keeps the dead wall 
standing, but the sap makes the live 
tree still more alive with growth. So 
compulsion and fear keep us true to 



154 ipetennials* 

duty, but love makes us larger and 
fitter for greater duty every day. 

2)ecember iBigbtccntb. 

You may muffle yourself in world- 
Hness and yet understand an argu- 
ment. You cannot muffle yourself in 
worldliness and yet be responsive to a 
love. 

Wcccmbcv mtncteentb* 

You need God in the very things 
which seem to separate you from 
Him. You must seek Him in the 
very places where the misery of life 
seems to be that He is not. You 
must question the stoniest path for 
streams of water. 

December ^wentfetb* 

Scepticism is not merely the disbelief 
of some propositions. If it were that, 



2)ecember* 155 

there is not one of us that would not 
be a sceptic. It is the habit and the 
preference of disbelieving. God save 
us all from that scepticism ! 

2)ecember Zvccnt^^tlvBU 

Begin by seeking for what is true, 
not for what is false. Be as critical as 
you will, search as severely as you 
want to into the belief which offers 
itself for your acceptance, but let your 
search and criticism have always for its 
purpose that you may find out what 
you may believe, not that you may 
find out what you need not believe. 

December XLxocnt^^eccon^, 

This coming week is rich with Christ- 
mas glory. The thing that makes it 
glorious, the only thing that can give 
dignity to all this annual outbreak of 
thankfulness and joy, is that the Christ- 



is6 perennials* 

mas days are full of the truth of Christ's 
redemption of the world. 

December ^went^=tblrD» 
Christ comes with His love to the 
great, roomy, hospitable human heart. 
But the hospitality — not so wise as 
lavish — has it not already been more 
than wasted on a host of beggarly and 
unworthy claimants, so that when the 
Master comes there is no room to 
spare ? 

December Zvocnt^^^tonxtb. 
No room ! . . . Christ knows 
whether there be room or not. Once 
let Him in and He shall find room 
where you never dreamed of. He shall 
throw open chambers wholly new to 
you, and you yourself shall be amazed 
when the great spiritual capacity of 
your nature gradually unfolds itself to 
entertain its spiritual Guest. 



December* 157 

December Zvccnt^^tlttb. 

Then let every heart keep its Christmas 

within, 
Christ's pity for sorrow, Christ's hatred 

of sin, 
Christ's care for the weakest, Christ's 

courage for right, 
Christ's dread of the darkness, Christ's 

love for the right. 

December Zwcnt^^^eiitb. 

Let me be a thorough believer in 
Jesus Christ, let me, that is, have 
taken with Him all the revelation of 
humanity that is in Him, and where is 
the fellow-man with whom I shall not 
be at peace ? The martyr, seeing Christ 
standing at the right hand of God, is at 
peace with his enemies. 

December ZvQcnt^^6CVcntb. 

The building of the perfect man is 
the noblest work that can go on in the 



is8 perennials* 

world. . . . And at last, when it 
has passed away out of the world into 
new regions of activity and growth, it 
leaves its power to bless men after it is 
dead. There is nothing so round and 
perfect as such a life in all the world. 
It is the very crown of God's creation. 

December Zv0cnt^^ciQbtb. 

How good it is that there are years 
at the beginning of every life when it 
is the most easy thing to believe in 
absolute right and goodness ! 

December ^vocnt^^nintb. 

The ship looks forward fearlessly to 
the new ocean with its new stars and 
new winds, for the same captain will 
sail her there who has sailed her here ; 
and the fact that he will sail her there 
otherwise than he sails her here will 
only be the sign of how sleepless and 
watchful is his care. 



Becember^ 159 

December Zbixtictb. 
He who is in the true spirit of the 
sunset turns instantly from the west- 
ward to the eastern look. The things 
the day has given him — its knowledge 
and its inspiration and its friendships 
and its faith, — these the departing day 
is powerless to carry with it. They 
claim the new day in which to show 
their power and do their work. 

Becember tTblitiss^fitst 

Every new experience is a new op- 
portunity of knowing God. Every new 
experience is like a jewel set into the 
texture of our life, on which God shines 
and makes interpretation and revelation 
of Himself. And the man who feels 
himself going out of a dying Year with 
these jewels of experience which have 
burned forth from his life during its 
months, and knowing that God in the 



i6o iperennials* 

New Year will shine upon them and 
reveal Himself by them, may well go 
full of expectation, saying, ** The Lord 
is at hand/' 



Ipbillipa :flSrooft0» 

'* From God he came; with God he 
walked; God's world he loved; God*s 
children he helped; God's Church he 
led; God's blessed Son he followed; 
God's nearness he enjoyed; with God 
he dwells." 

The Rev. Arthur Brooks, D.D. 



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